2016 Jeremy Deller: The Battle of Orgreave. At the Worcester Museum.

http://www.jeremydeller.org/TheBattleOfOrgreave/TheBattleOfOrgreave_Video.php

We have been to Worcester Art gallery and Museum to see an exhibition.
Our aim was to examine the relationship between the work and the space it was presented in.

A film presented in the semi dark space was  about the re-enactment of The Battle of Orgreave, which was a violent confrontation on 18 June 1984 between police and the pickets at a British Steel Corporation coking plant in Orgreave, South Yorkshire.
As I have gathered one of the most violent moments in UK history. From a foreigner’s point of view I can relate to this as I have witnessed strikes during my lifetime , but still all those moments have not been engraved in to the history of the county as The Battle of Orgreave has.
It is hard for me to compare the political situations that have happened in different times, in different countries, due to the fact of immersion.
As in living through the events and possibly not being at that age to understand the situation, but experiencing the effects.(This is from my point.)
I will have to explain myself now.
I was born in Latvia in 1993. Both my parents had Russian names and surnames,happened to live in Latvia just like many other people.
Due to various historical aspects the situation in the country was not turning to the bright side for the Russian speaking part of the population.
Latvia has had high numbers of Russian speaking citizens for decades at that point .(After the 4th of May 1990.) 

According to Article 5 of the “Law on the State Language” of 1999, all languages except Latvian and Livonian are considered foreign. Therefore, from the moment the law come into force in 2000, state institutions stopped acceptung documents and statements in Russian, nor did they provide information on it, except in specially stipulated cases.
The hatred kept growing and I remember it as I was 7 to 10 years old when I experienced this aggression from the people who I studied with in school.

What I am trying to say here is that the opportunity to study in native language has been taken away from the older students in Russian schools. 
Of course these two events are very different, but I am looking to link the idea of inequality hear.
Young people looked down upon.

When I entered the room where the film was projected on to a wall it did not get my interest at all.
Sitting in that room I felt bored and tired at first. iI did not understand the purpose of this film. 
I somehow compared it to a LARP(live action role play.)
The film was not visually appealing. If I wouldn’t have come here with a group I wouldn’t watch the video probably.
In the film men aged 45 + and dressed in simple clothes. They were screaming .
The weather in the video was damp, it was raining.
The men were re-enacting,it was long, staged and organized process . 
The energy in the video was divided in to two parts – the miners and the police.

As the artist himself said – “In 1998 I saw an advert for an open commission for Artangel. For years I had had this idea to re-enact this confrontation that I had witnessed as a young person on TV, of striking miners being chased up a hill and pursued through a village. It has since become an iconic image of the 1984 strike – having the quality of a war scene rather than a labour dispute. I received the commission, which I couldn’t believe, because I actually didn’t think it was possible to do this. After two years’ research, the re-enactment finally happened, with about eight-hundred historical re-enactors and two-hundred former miners who had been part of the original conflict. Basically, I was asking the re-enactors to participate in the staging of a battle that occurred within living memory, alongside veterans of the campaign. I’ve always described it as digging up a corpse and giving it a proper post-mortem, or as a thousand-person crime re-enactment.”

As I continued to watch the film I started to understand what was happening, the interview moments in the film guided through the narrative of the film.

I also would like to mention that there were no headphones for this piece,the sound was coming from multiple speakers around the room. Which I find to be more welcoming. It is a lot easier for me to pas by a piece of work with headphones rather than speakers. 
This film was relevant to the space it was presented in, as the gallery was part of the museum. 
Within the current events , this film brings out discussions on the political situations that are happening  in the world today.

After the exhibition,we were asked to elaborate on what we have just seen and if we can link the events of the re-enactment to today’s current affairs.
Which made me think of division. 
Divisions as part of any demonstration,riot,strike.